The present invention relates to a camera control system, camera control apparatus, camera operation device, and method, for controlling remote cameras.
Recently, the Internet has received a lot of attention. The assignee of the present invention has already disclosed some inventions that relate to camera servers connected to the Internet. According to such inventions, the user connects a desired camera server via the Internet, controls the angle (pan and tilt angles and zoom value) of a camera connected to the camera server, and can observe live images sensed by the camera. For example, when the camera of the camera server is set at a resort, tourist spot, or the like, users can enjoy images of such locations at their homes.
However, since images sensed by the camera are transferred to clients connected to the server at that time, all users at these clients can observe the images but one client (one user) alone has the right of access to control that camera, i.e., can freely operate the pan and tilt angles and zoom value. Even when the time period of the right of access to control the camera granted to a single client is limited, and the right of access to control is granted, e.g., to queued clients in turn, if a large number of clients are queued, each user cannot observe an image at his or her desired angle.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above situation, and has as its object to provide a camera control system, camera server, camera client, control method, and storage medium, which store previously sensed image information, and can find and display information at a user""s desired angle.
In order to achieve the above object, a camera control system according to the present invention comprises the following arrangement.
That is, there is provided a camera control system built by a camera server which can freely control a camera device, an angle of which can be freely controlled, and a client for displaying an image from the camera server,
the client comprising:
search condition transfer means for transferring angle information as search condition instruction information to the server; and
display control means for displaying image data transferred from the camera server on predetermined display means, and
the camera server comprising:
storage means for storing image data sensed by the camera device and angle information of that image data in predetermined storage means;
search means for searching the storage means in accordance with the angle information in the instruction information when the instruction information is received from the client; and
image data transfer means for transferring the image data found by the search means to the client.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the figures thereof.